Vincze Miklós

Nowadays, astronauts eat food that's as good as what you can get anywhere on Earth. But back in the day, space food came in weird tubes, like toothpaste. Or was shaped into blobs of tasteless goop. Here are some fascinating, colorful photos of food items in space, from the early days of space travel to today.

In her book Packing for Mars, Mary Roach explains:

Space food must be both lightweight and dense in calories. Therefore, bacon enters a hydraulic press to become a “Bacon Square” and toast becomes a “Toasted Bread Cube” glossed with a layer of edible fat designed to keep crumbs in check. Because carbonation bubbles won’t rise to the surface without gravity, beer is a no-go in space. Milkshakes work just fine, however, as does grapefruit juice.

Today's space food has come a long way since the Mercury Program of the early 1960s. When John Glenn first tried apple sauce from a squeeze tube onboard his Friendship 7 spacecraft in 1962, who could have dreamed that later astronauts would be able to choose from such a wide variety of foods? Space foods have evolved from primitive pastes or cubes to fully cooked, "thermostabilized" entrees similar to the military's MREs (meals ready-to-eat).